16.

. . .

Ago ~

Kara stayed knelt on one knee, her profile shadowy in the blacks and greys she wore when acting as something other than the daylight handmaiden she most often posed as. "Lorelei's been handled, Your Majesty. According to plan."

"And without exposure?"

"Drove her straight into that knot of your son's friends, gathering on the floor below as the letter you sent in his name requested of them. They never saw me. They saw plenty of her." She looked up into the Queen's face with a small, droll smile. "Tried to charm her way through with the same method I observed in the lounge, but interestingly enough, the poisoned word did not work on the Lady Sif." Sif herself now stood main guard over the prisoner, having figured out quickly for herself what was going on with the runaway 'refugee.' Kara's respect for Thor's long-suffering friend remained strong - especially enjoying the part where Sif had punted the girl across the room with a hearty shield whack.

Frigga frowned as she collected that detail and put it with the rest of the night's discoveries, her hands knotting against each other as she paced her solar with slow, deliberate steps. "That's an interesting targeting mechanism. The charm only works on those inclined to be romantically interested in the girl. Would have been better if the journal had been clear on that."

"Would have, Your Majesty. No doubt of that. But your sons are safe." Kara inclined her head in respect and then dipped it low again. "I could not remain, of course, but by what I could hear it seemed the effects of the spellbinding left Prince Thor quickly." She left out the other bit she overheard - the ridiculously over the top and entirely familiar method the younger prince had chosen to unknowingly scatter the prey into Kara's path, and getting his bits kicked in for the cheek of it. Kara was capable of tact, when it mattered.

Frigga took the canvas stool closest to her, gesturing once for her servant to rise, and then again to have her take the small chair beside her. When Kara resettled, Frigga took to the scholastic tone she always used when planning her next moves. "Amora is still running. She's not entirely stupid, her path alters course regularly to fox the riders I put after her, but the destination is known regardless of her games. She'll go right back to Karnilla's skirts, just not tonight."

"Do you want me to run trail?"

"I don't, Kara. I put my own mark on her before she slipped out the gates, and no one in Nornheim will sniff it out until far too late." She reached out to the table, pulling a small copy of a map towards her. There were already several notations on it, creating a path only Frigga's magics could track. "She's off the main roads already, but there's enough of a blockade between her and the boundary that we're going to get an extra few hours rest before she manages to break around it. I expect she'll go north. It's quicker, and while not safer than the southron route, I don't think she's concerned with such mundane threats right now."

Kara frowned, studying the map. "And she'll not return for her sister?"

"No…" Frigga bit the corner of her mouth, studying her own map. "Amora is a decisive, self absorbed little creature, I think." She glanced at Kara, wry. "I intend to use that detail when questioning Lorelei later tonight. You'll be on standby, of course. Until I have a proper binding made that will reign in that 'chanted mouth of hers, the Einherjar will be functionally useless to me in the dungeons."

"Of course, Majesty." Kara folded her hands on her lap, patient.

Frigga marked the silence with a nod. "Odin will be apprised of what we've done so far, and when it's time, I'll tell him the rest." The wry look became an even more dry smile. "He has conceded again that I know this battlefield of Karnilla's better than he. The war afield has been his to face, but that was never the true front of this conflict."

Kara kept silent, but a single corner of her mouth tugged down to bely what gnawed at her mind.

Of course, the Queen noticed. "He also recognizes that these are my plans, by my order."

Softly, unable to help herself, Kara said, "And because he would never turn against thee, Your Majesty, he focuses his dislike on myself ever hotter." Brigida, still the senior handmaiden, knew something was off, sensing it like a wolf might smell a wounded kit. Thus, Brigida liked to be damn sure Kara served at the king's side at supper most nights now. With both royal sons withdrawn and distant, sometimes literally, over the still-raging war, there was little comfort in daily routine any longer. At least she used to be able to read chapter titles over Prince Loki's shoulder while he ate, marking out interesting books to find like treasure hunts in the library. Even that small pleasure was now gone.

She always tried not to think about such things. It was not her duty.

Frigga reached out and touched her arm once, gentle, with a single finger. "Such is the ire of kings. But nonetheless, your place and your service is protected by my word, so long as I live. 'Twas my demand to bring one of my Vanaheim's strange little secrets to the palace, which he knows full well. Not an argument he'll forget soon, being as he lost that one so badly." A small chuckle, no less full of love for her husband. "He'll live. And so will you, Kara. Discomfort, unfortunately, is a thing we will all have to bear."

Kara smiled earnestly for the Queen, feeling irritated with herself for letting that much slip out despite trained control. A mistake of her youth. Her emotional state and her own trials were not matters the Queen needed to bother herself with. "My apologies for bringing it up, Your Majesty."

"None are needed." Frigga turned the map over, studying a block of her own codes on the back. "I want Lorelei to stew a while before I pry at her. A few hours, perhaps. Just enough for her fears to gnaw ratlike at her mind." She looked back to Kara. "I dismiss you until then, with the suggestion you get what rest you can, meanwhile. Once I have some of what I'd like to know, we'll be ready for the next phase. And if we are fortunate, that will be the last such dangerous one."

Kara bowed her head, making ready to rise.

"Ah. And before I forget." Frigga patted around her desk, looking for something in one of the narrow drawers where she kept her correspondence sorted. She came up with a book, small and with a fine blue cloth cover. "Since, like my own son, I know you won't rest until you've fed your mind a little, something that might help that rest must now at last find its way to you." She offered it to Kara with a nod, who took it gently. "Not from my own hand does it go to yours, but say instead it's a gift from an unknown source."

Kara studied its cover with her brow tight from surprise, recognizing it from the night festival markets of almost a year ago. A tome on a possibly untrue but mythic story of a strong-minded Alfheim princess and a spellblade warrior she'd sworn to her own service before both turned mercenary. Luridly romantic thing, dismissively referenced in a more serious Elven history she'd read a few years ago, but a good story by all accounts. She hadn't had the coin on her for it, not then, and found no chance later to return to the stalls before the merchants left for their home fields.

But someone had noticed.

The shadow, of course. Kara ran her hand over the cloth, rough linen gone smooth as silk from age. Then she tucked it away within the leather of her night-guard tunic with a bob of her head in gratitude. Other thoughts on that topic must wait for privacy. "Then let the air hear my thanks, and also I thank you for passing it to me, Your Majesty."

"Mm. Off with you then, until you hear my next beckon." Frigga shook her head, amused. "And don't let Brigida rustle you in the dead of night again. Particularly not now. If she tries, remind her it's Helena's turn to serve at a moment's call, by my own command."

That got a laugh, if small and decorous enough to not sound too pleased with the idea of Brigida finally being on the outs for her stunts. "At your word, then. Good eve, Your Majesty."

"Good eve, Kara. And don't read the whole thing at one blow. Honestly, pace yourself and get some sleep."

. . .

Kara's private room was an insultingly small corner within such a grand palace, reminding her with physical pressure of her place among the other girls. Not a thing she minded much, having previously been barracked in tighter quarters and with no privacy at all. But the others thought it a way to keep her where they liked her, and she was not about to correct their mistake. It had enough cubbies and corners to protect the few things she kept that Brigida might 'accidentally' spoil, if she found opportunity, and that was all Kara really needed.

She sat on the narrow but comfortable cot, with its borrowed soft quilts and a few thin but fine-woven blankets, and she picked up the blue book from where she laid it atop her lockbox of gear for a few while changing into a night shift. A moment later, the box was hidden in one of its usual nooks. The book itself was an excellent copy, no stains, no tears on the cover. When she put it at an angle, she found the slight but intricate embossing that marked it as an original print. Hence the cost she was forced to balk at.

Someone hadn't been deterred by that detail. Again, obvious conclusion said it was her funny shadow from the last night of the fair. She had her clear suspicions of who that was - their height alone, the deliberately altered but noticeable gait, the overly dramatic and blatant lack of identity, the knowledge of the castle's lesser known - and beautiful - gardens. She tried not to think about that night too often, or anything related to her suspicions, really. Soft memories were distractions she couldn't often spare time for.

And yet despite herself, she had already slipped back to that secret solace twice. Just to look at the fairy pollen in the moonlight again, once floating, the other time quiescent and setting the plants themselves to an unearthly and elegant glow.

Regardless. The shadow should have at least padded his boots, or hunkered a bit more to fuzz what his profile made hard fact. But all those suspicions came up against the hard wall of the obvious tactical questions: Why? And what in Hel for?

Certainly there were no other clues. The prince had been off at war until today, and previous to that, turned to Amora either out of boredom or some sort of personal concept of masochism. Maybe both. It wasn't her business. Kara hadn't cared for the Nornheim girls much, mostly out of an instinct that followed the Queen's own hunch that there might well be something else lurking behind their pretty smiles - suspicions that had now been wholly borne out. But she hadn't cared about chosen company. Further, there was the wildly improbable fiction that anyone above a stableboy would even notice a palace serving girl - the younger prince's odd affinity for observing much of what was going on in the palace notwithstanding.

Traditions and taboo took care of much of the rest. Finally, most important, she was not one meant to catch the eye. It went against all her training and her duty.

And yet, the book lay in her hands, solid and real.

Kara traced a finger along the spine of it, reading the shifting silver Elf glyphs that appeared at the warmth of her touch, unable to keep a small smile off her face. Well, regardless of source or reason, a good story was something to treasure. She snuggled down, her back against the cool wall behind her cot with a too-soft pillow to prop her spine, and she read her new book until the princess of Alfheim snuck out through the wine cellar to properly kill the snot out of a roving goblin band with her own dagger, going uncaught by an entirely too-uptight royal family. Then she fell asleep with the book stuffed protectively up under her chin, buying herself a time of peace before she strapped on her blades once more.

. . .

Queen Frigga stood, regal and cold, before the golden energy field that kept Lorelei contained in a private cell. There were no guards in sight, and Lady Sif had been ordered off by her word for rest. Frigga had asked for Valkyries to resume the guard cycle, not standard procedure, but come dawn they would take over the watch. Meanwhile, the Dwarves had been given the problem of Lorelei's bewitched voice - the solution, they said, would take less than a week to forge. Kara arrived at the solar just as the Queen dismissed the stationed emissary of Nidavellir, a plump old Dwarf lady whose head was adorned with countless thick ginger braids shot through with gold thread. The challenge was an obvious thrill, the emissary leaving with a skip in her step.

The Nornheim sister was now defanged, but still visibly furious. She stood in parallel to the Queen, her clean but plain prisoner's dress clenched in tight fists and staring down at her captor without a trace of respect. Kara watched from a secret shadow to ensure the safety of this interrogation, the queen's magic placing her in dimness. The illusion gave her that familiar itch, and she tried to not reach under her black mask to pinch at her tickling face.

"She didn't stay behind for you, Lorelei." Frigga's voice was as cold as her posture. "Never paused to look for you as she fled through the gates, my hounds and huntsmen at her back. Your sister is gone, and you are here, and you will never be free. Treason is one of our few great crimes, Lorelei. Either you will live out your life in this cell, slow and eternal and alone, or you will die and be forgotten. Which, do you think, is more merciful?"

"It is only treason if I serve the golden throne, and I don't, bitch queen. I serve the true." Lorelei bared her teeth at Frigga, who remained unmoved by the cheap insult. Kara's hand rested on the hilt of a small dagger, and a finger twitched. She had her own opinions on those options. "You slink down here and try to tell me my Amora doesn't love me, and I tell you back the day will come that she saves me from your kind."

"I'll be old and gone before that self-centered little creature returns for you. She let you lead around my son like a lamb, for such is your gift, but she was always the one controlling the information. The data from our refugees under the nose of my other son, the details you both stole from my family, all that ran through her fingers. And that, my dear, is always the real power. She sacrificed you to save her own skin, for more time to run away back home to a would-be ruler who will also raise no finger to rescue you." Frigga interlaced her fingers, the long gold trails of her hair spilling over her shoulders. "You're worthless to them." Then the smile, gentle and warm. "But you have some value to me."

Lorelei trembled, her knuckles going white and tight over the folds of her dress. "I will not betray my own family for yours."

"You don't have to, child. I have no need of that. But I do need certain information. Of an intellectual kind. No secrets, only wisdom. From one witchy bitch to another." The smile broadened, and like her husband and her warrior son showed on the battlefield, there was something hard in it. "You can give me that freely, Lorelei, and there will be no betrayals on your ledger."

"Or?" Her face the picture of distrust, Lorelei snarled the question.

"Or I will take it from you. No physical torture, you must note. I'll just tear it from your mind while my maids hold you down. I can inform you that would be far worse."

Lorelei stared at her, blood drain leaving her face ghostly white. There were no threats here. Only the sedate promise from a queen at war. Kara lifted her chin, still watching. The idea that queens would be soft and bloodless in all things was a false one. Her own arrival in the palace had been met with a private sparring match with the Queen herself - Frigga wanting to be damned sure she was fully trained and blood-scarred. Kara had passed that test, but not easily, and she realized partway through that the Queen was going relatively easy on her with that long silver dagger Frigga kept near to hand. Tactics and cunning were being tested, not brute strength.

The implicit demand had been to keep improving herself, lest another, harder trial came. It struck her that this war and the Queen's secret hand in it was precisely that kind of trial: no trial at all, and one with death as the reward for failure. She toyed with her dagger pommel, feeling its edges dull under her gloved fingernail.

"Should I speak freely, one sorceress to another, what mercy do you grant?" Lorelei wasn't stupid. She hated, but she'd bargain to the end for a little more give. However, that hate was intense. "The blade or the silence?"

"You'll live, Lorelei, live to see every day your sister doesn't reach back for you, and you'll do it in the comfort of a palace cell and no Nornheim damp. Should if I be wrong and she tries to return for you, you gain that small victory before I see you both executed cleanly." A laugh. "And as the years drag on, and she does not, I will forget about you, except as a negligible point in my annual list of palace duties."

"To Hel's lap with you, and with the thing I sense in the shadows that you no doubt brought to threaten me if your words don't move me, and to Hel with your impotent King, and particularly to Hel with your two sons, both as boring and twisted up as you. Thor was a dull lay and your other boy is a mechanical thing Amora learned quick to hate. She told me all about him. When she comes for me, I expect she'll kill him on the way." Lorelei spat it all, panting at the end in fury. "You used him to catch me, when he didn't have the taste to get himself killed afield like she wanted. We won't forget that. Ever."

Frigga only watched her in silence, visibly untouched, regal, the glint of her eye meant to tell the girl that her insults were so meaningless that she, with all the power here cupped in her palms, deigned to ignore them. "Is your anger out of your system? What is your response to my bargain?"

"Fuck you, old queen."

"The blade and the tear, then." The Queen partially turned towards Kara, beckoning in a soft way that told her this was a bluff that preceded the very real hell that might wait for the prisoner. Kara slipped forward out of the shadows and the magical dim, her blade out a perfect inch, knowing the way the dungeon lights caught its glint. She was in her most theatrical blacks, meant to be seen, not for the hunt. These had dull silvered scales and blackened metal, and the mask that hid her face was charred with knife-marks and runes that spelled thirteen different names of Death Herself. She looked like some primal demon summoned to serve, her talons torn off and become blades in another's service.

Sometimes visual impact was a better threat than any weapon. The Queen was a master of such things and some years ago told her to keep the florid old set of armor despite her own mislike of it. For Kara, the more plain the gear, the more serious the work. This was a mere game, a jape.

Nonetheless, Lorelei shrank back from the edge of her cage at the sight of her, as intended.

"You saw true, Lorelei. I intend quite clearly to threaten you, if my words alone aren't enough." Frigga turned back to her prisoner. "I want you to recall, however, that my words came first. And I can afford to be merciful. One more chance to change your mind, to speak with me as one student of magic to another, and to be left in peace in your cell. An easy offer, Lorelei, instead of the pain a mother whose sons are at war might inflict."

Lorelei's gaze flicked from the barbed shadow to the queen and back. Then, slow and broken, she lowered herself and set upright a stool she'd kicked aside hours earlier. Sitting on it, her head bowed, the dungeon was filled with only the sound of her breathing.

"I will, for the sake of mercy, take your silence as consent." Remaining steadfast, never showing her own weariness with the night, the Queen stood tall with her shadow not far behind. "Let us begin."

. . .

Kara paused, looking out the window at a sky with no stars. "Going to rain again, looks like. And dawn comes in a few hours."

Loki stirred in his seat, jostled back into the now. He let his hand drop from where he'd been resting his chin on it as he listened and thought back to those lost days, looking out to see what she saw. "Storms, I think the 'casters decided. A grey morning, and a cold one after the rain passes through."

"And Prince Thor himself home in the castle to hear the thunder begin. How terribly apropos." Kara rose from her seat with more grace than she'd had when she took it, irony sharp in her voice. "You must hate that."

"Wait." He tried to not make it sound like a plea. It sounded hollow instead, as if his own voice were still calling from the past.

"The story's unfinished, I know." She didn't look at him for his interruption, checking her gear at her waist instead and taking a couple steps towards the window. "Another time. Next eve perhaps, or shortly after. Long enough for you to consider your end of the bargain, because you know I've got it marked due. You'd best get some rest, Prince, despite yourself."

He bit off another try, watched her slip into the sill with her boots finding a careful grip, and instead said, "You might just use the damned door."

"No joy in that, Highness." She looked at him, now only hung onto the side of the window with a single firm hand, and she wore a surprisingly bright grin for a moment. "Little enough fun in life of late, so I'll take what I can get."

He started to rise from the chair when she let go with a laugh meant at his expense, then sat back down again, knowing she was already long gone.